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I guess that most of my readers have noticed that I have been somewhat upset by Arthur Laffer’s attempt to demonstrate that fiscal stimulus doesn’t work. While I am certainly very skeptical about how fruitful fiscal stimulus will be I was not impressed with Laffer’s “evidence” that fiscal stiumulus does not work. I did, however, not plan to write more on this – as I certainly do not want to promote fiscal easing anywhere and find this fiscal issue somewhat boring and irrelevant for understanding the present crisis – but then I got an interesting email from Jim Allbery.

Jim is not an economist, but a software developer with a degree in math. Jim had been equally upset by the bad math in Laffer’s Wall Street Journal piece as I had been and Jim actually has taken a closer look at Laffer’s math. Jim sent me a note on his considerations about Laffer’s math. I think Jim’s note is rather interesting and Jim has kindly allowed me to publish it. So here is Jim’s comment on Bad Math in the WSJ

Finally, just to get my position clear. I believe there is a rather significant need for fiscal consolidation in both the US and the euro zone. There is therefore no room for fiscal easing in the US or in most euro zone countries. However, the fiscal position is being made worse by overly tight monetary policy, which seriously depresses growth in both the US and the euro zone. I therefore agree with Laffer that fiscal stimulus is not the way forward in the present situation. However, I am no Calvinist and I do not believe that our present problems are due to bad fiscal policies, but rather due to overly tight monetary policy.

Arthur Laffer’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal on fiscal stimulus has generated quite a stir in the blogosphere – with mostly Keynesians and Market Monetarists coming out and pointing to the blatant mistakes in Laffer’s piece. I on my part I was particularly appalled by the fact that Laffer said Estonia, Finland, Slovakia and Ireland had particularly Keynesian policies in 2008. In my previous post I went through why I think Laffer’s “analysis” is completely wrong, however, I did not go into details why Laffer got the numbers wrong. I do not plan to go through all Laffer’s mistakes, but instead I will zoom in on Estonian fiscal policy since 2006 to do some justice to the fiscal consolidation implemented by the Estonian government in 2009-10.

In his WSJ article Laffer claims that the Estonian government has pursued fiscal stimulus in response to the crisis. Nothing of course could be further from the truth. One major problem with Laffer’s numbers is that he is using public spending as share of GDP to analyze the magnitude of change in fiscal policy. However, for a given level of public spending in euro (the currency today in Estonia) a drop in nominal GDP will naturally lead to an increase in public spending as share of GDP. This is obviously not fiscal stimulus. Instead it makes more sense to look at the level of public spending adjusted for inflation and this is exactly what I have done in the graph below. I also plot Estonian GDP growth in the graph. The data is yearly data and the source is IMF.

Lets start out by looking at pre-crisis public spending. In the years just ahead of the escalation of the crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brother in the autumn of 2008 public spending grew quite strongly – and hence fiscal policy was strongly expansionary. I at the time I was a vocal critique of the Estonian’s government fiscal policies.

There is certainly reason to be critical of the conduct of fiscal policy in Estonia in the boom-years 2005-8, but it does not in anyway explain what happened in 2008. Laffer looks at changes in fiscal policy from 2007 to 2009. The problem with this obviously that he is not looking at the right period. He is looking at the period while the Estonian economy was still growing strongly. Hence, while the Estonian economy already started slowing in 2007 it was not before the autumn of 2008 that the crisis really hit. Therefore, the first full crisis year was 2009 and it was in 2009 we got the first crisis budget.

So what happened in 2009? Inflation adjusted public spending dropped! This is what makes Estonia unique. The Estonian government did NOT implement Keynesian policies rather it did the opposite. It cut spending. This is clear from the graph (the blue line). It is also clear from the graph that the Estonian government introduced further austerity measures and cut public spending further in 2010. This is of course what Laffer calls “fiscal stimulus”. All other economists in the world would call it fiscal consolidation or fiscal tightening and it is surely not something that Keynesians like Paul Krugman would recommend. On the other hand I think the Estonian government deserves credit for its brave fiscal consolidation. The Estonian government estimates that the size of fiscal consolidation from 2008 to 2010 amounts to around 17% (!) of GDP. I think this estimate is more or less right – hardly Krugmanian policies.

And maybe it is here Laffer should have started his analysis. The Estonian government did the opposite of what Keynesians would have recommend and what happened? Growth picked up! I would not claim that that had much to do with the fiscal consolidation, but at least it is hard to argue based on the data that the fiscal consolidation had a massively negative impact on GDP growth. Laffer would have known that had he actually taken care to have proper look at the data rather than just fitting the data to his story.

Laffer of course could also have told the story about the years 2011 and 2012, where the Estonian government in fact did introduce (moderate) fiscal stimulus. And what was the result? Well, growth slowed! The result Laffer was looking for! Again he missed that story. I would of course not claim that fiscal policy caused GDP growth to slow in 20011-12, but at least it is an indication that fiscal stimulus will not necessary give a boost to growth.

PPS If you really want to know what have driven Estonian growth – then you should have a look at the ECB. Both the boom and the bust was caused by the ECB. It is that simple – fiscal policy did not play the role claimed by Laffer or Krugman. It is all monetary and I might do post at that at a later stage.